Conclusions

This was probably my favorite course this term! At first, I took this for my requirement because the description sounded so interesting even though I had never heard about Romance Studies, and I am SO glad I took that chance because I thoroughly not only enjoyed the content of this course, but also the structure which allowed me the freedom to really get engrossed in these novels and find an escape into novels that I will refer to from now until I can remember.

I loved how different each novel was, and also how uniquely insightful each was whether it be historically or commenting on human nature and the human condition. It really pushed me to read again (and now I am obsessed and fully back into reading fiction – so thank you!!), and also was very inspiring and now has me wanting to write my own novels as well! (If I ever do, I will accredit this course).

I loved getting to tap into the heart of the histories that I was not previously aware of. It wasn’t a straightforward textbook outline of historical events but rather a philosophical one entrenched in literature. I’m also now more interested in history and so aware of how much knowledge I lack.

I want to thank you for creating and teaching such an impactful and exciting course! This is definitely a course I will remember throughout my life and one that really helped me this term find an escape. Overall, this course was very beneficial to my learning, and my continued learning.

Soldiers of Salamis

This novel has so many areas that can be explored. From memory, to morality, to information, to accuracy and the nature of fiction and literature!

I really enjoyed this read. Particularly the first and third sections. I found the second section to be a bit dry – though it was intriguing to know more of the man with the mysterious survival story, I was more interested, as was the protagonist, in finding out more about the soldier who let Mazas go and why he did. Though the details of the second section did leave me zoning out, I did really appreciate the way the three sections were tied to each other! It offered up broken information trying to be linked by whatever commonalities the journalist could find, and this was reflected in the way he went about finding and tracing the story, as well as critically evaluating it and questioning the gaps and discrepancies.

I really liked the third section as it offered some release to the tension built up of the journalist finding clues and trying to produce a satisfactory novel that both felt complete and factually accurate. I found the repetitiveness of the comparison of historical tales and fictional tales to be quite interesting, though I’m not sure how to frame that into a larger theme – maybe it alludes to the ending whether details are left out and it is stated that unless you’ve lived through it, you can’t really know or understand the experiences of war.

My question to you is the one explored by the journalist in this novel; why do you think the soldier let Mazas go?

Amulet

Amulet was such an interesting read, with the novel at times dipping into fantastical and sporadic narratives and at other times detailing straightforward and raw accounts of Auxilio’s life in Mexico.

I found the book to be very fun to read, with the protagonist detailing the accounts of the people in and out of her life, as well as offering snippets of her own intentions and goals. I liked the opening as it framed the protagonist and her situation very ambiguously – there were almost no accuracies and she came across as a little bizarre (with the whole vase story). Nonetheless, I really appreciated her passion for literature and poetry, and being a philosophy major, I enjoyed the appearance of phil in this novel.

The central event of this novel was her getting trapped in the bathroom of her university during the take over. It was interesting that beyond her own survival, it seemed that there was an obligation for her to survive, which she did by staying quiet and starving – if she was the only one to witness this she had to survive to sustain the story. The concept of ‘beyond time’ was prevalent throughout the novel, and especially towards the end with her discussing the future of certain writers as well her recounts of her memories of others. This element of her being beyond time, cements her role as a ‘memory’ or as ‘history’ of all the experiences she witnesses, as well as the ones she belongs to, those experiences that only she holds the burden of viewing of acknowledging especially when the world doesn’t or works to invalidate them. I found this to be very creative, and I also liked how the erratic-ness of her story-telling mirrored the kind of history she held and it’s view in the world.

Overall, I really liked this novel, though I didn’t fully grasp all the symbolisms of characters such as Elena, etc. Though I suspect they represent some aspect of the history of the nation.

My question is: Why do you think the bathroom event was so central? Did it mean to root trauma centrally to history? How did you feel the characters were significant to Auxilio’s storytelling?

The Old Gringo

The old gringo is another look at memory and trauma, recounting the story of an old man who leaves his life behind and has nothing to lose, and Harriet and Arroyo, all of whom are situated at the hacienda.

What struck out to me was how some parts of the novel sounded poetic, especially with the repetition of Harriet sitting alone and remembering. I didn’t really find myself becoming very interested in the story, and this might have been because I felt very removed from the context when I first started reading it (and I was deathly sick so don’t have much memory reading it in the first place. Though I did really like the take on memory this novel had.

With Harriet, I really resonated with the idea of trauma haunting the present. The sprinkling of the lines of her thinking, as if the novel were her memories coming to life around her as she’s remembering, speaking to the vitality of our traumas and how they can tie the past to the present in an almost seamless way.

This kind of reminded me of both Nada and the shrouded woman, with Nada having the idea of trauma within the relationships in the house (hacienda), and with the reflective aspect of the shrouded woman as she recounts her life (though she is dead, and Harriet remains the only one out of the three alive).

My question is: Did you enjoy this novel? Could you relate to any of the characters? I could go on about the idea of having nothing to lose as in the case of the old man, but how did it make you think about your own life, and if it did, what motivates you to do the things that you do or to be fearless?

 

 

 

Nada, Laforet

Nada is a novel based on the story of a young girl who moves to Barcelona in hopes of experiencing the colours of life, and finds herself in the midst of a broken and cruel family.

I really liked this novel. I liked how the explosive and violent energies of the characters and their actions contrasted against the almost comical narration of Andrea, who from the perspective of a young university student, provided the basis for an honest and emotional storytelling of life with her extended family.

What caught me off guard was the amount of violence in the novel, whether it be Juan hitting Gloria, Roman verbally abusing her, or just the general energy of the household and the internal traumas of the characters themselves. I read that the context of the novel is rooted in the post Spanish civil war, and so all the characters and their crushed dreams, problems, and emotional volatility really convey the importance of this novel during the time.

I thought that the relationship between Ena and Andrea was quite interesting. Andrea comes across as a fairly rebellious girl, and it was interesting to see that same sentiment reflected in Ena, who also towards the end of the novel, expressed the joy she received from winding Roman up. There seems to be a strong theme of both freedom, and rebellion, with the latter often bringing out the former. I think this would probably reflect the post-war sentiments, where not only did a chaotic conception of life become alluring or familiar/ordinary due to the on-going war, but maybe seemed like the only way to gain freedom.

I don’t really know anything about the war other than the few google searches I’ve done just now, but it’s clear that Andrea’s family reflected the lower class people that were on the side of a republic. As such, the lives of the lower class and the brokenness and trauma in them is reflected in the characters, who we see from the beginning are very distressed and broken.

My question is: what did you think of Ena and Roman’s relationship? What larger theme did you think it represented? What did it really signify?

The Shrouded Woman

First off, I loved this novel. The shrouded Woman by Bombal details the narration of a dead woman who is able to recount her life as a dead body, and present to us moments in her life relating to love, self-worth, and  frustrations with underlying spiritual messages.

I thought Bombal captured the essence of ‘frustrated existence’ incredibly well, with her use of characters that are both naive and childish, as well as deeply sad and longing for things they just can’t seem to grasp or understand before it’s too late, with their ability to understand being overshadowed by the dominating presence of the males in their lives. I thought this narration was so clever, as we are able to get an overview of Ana’s life not as an objective account post-death, but as her living self despite having lived her entire life. It really opened up and explored well the themes of heartache and the troubles of unrequited love and sexual frustration. I could find so many moments within this novel where I was angry at the protagonist for being so childish, empathizing with her situation and feeling bad for her, while also finding parts of myself and my friends in her and while coming back to anger in how she deals with things and the role she gives to the men in her life.

I think what made this read especially prominent was it’s universality in the experiences of women and how they often are made to feel in relationships where they are subordinate and subject to the desires and insecurities of men. This does not underplay their own insecurities, which often times affects not only the men in their lives but ultimately their own lives and sense of self-worth, as we saw with many of the female characters who could’ve been friends or amicable if it wasn’t for the fact that each perceived other women in relation to men.

Ultimately, I felt that the almost ‘obsessive’ portrayal of women in relationships in how their partners see them, and the sadness of their lives when we know of the context that provokes their actions and reactions, really taps into universal themes of the experience of (privileged) women. I find it so incredible that when I read this book, I took so many photos of passages to send to my girlfriends because they were and are so relevant to our modern lives right now, whether it be comparison, making men the centre of our lives and purpose, being mistreated by them, being projected on or limited in relationships, having insecurities and reflecting insecurities, and the ups and downs of the search for love and where a balance of giving and receiving can be found in the constant fight for fulfilment. 

I also really enjoyed the spiritual undertones of this novel, with Ana and the other women’s’ battles over love reflecting complexities of their own identities. Thought this heavily featured the role and emotions of women in regards to relationships and men, it thoroughly explores one set of complexities amongst the many that make up a woman in both her identity and how she is conceived of in society, one that plays a large role and seems inescapable.

 

My question is: What parts of the novel and the characters did you find yourself relating to if you identify as a woman, and what parts did you find completely inaccurate to your experience? For the men, how do you feel about the portrayal of men in this novel, do you agree or have you seen other men reflect any of the behaviours of the men in the story? And for anyone else, did you relate to the relationship issues that were brought up in the novel, and if so, do you think these themes are universal? If you don’t have experience with relationships or if you don’t relate to romance, how did you feel about identity being so tied to romantic/non-romantic relationships?

“Combray”, Proust

As much as I would’ve loved to have completed this reading for my blog post, I found myself runnings out of time with some other things that were going on :\ I haven’t finished Combray yet (I plan to by Thursday’s class to discuss), however, I have read enough to get a gist of Proust and his writing style.

Thoughts:

Firstly, I absolutely love the way this book is written, and the many themes it touches on. The introduction really captured me, with Proust imploring the feelings of being alone with memory and emotion by conveying experience through an almost ‘out of body’ style narrative detailing his early childhood. I love the extreme length of this sentences – I think I read in the preface that Proust was actually fond of sentences that were too long as to fully capture the extent of an emotion of feeling. I can actually relate to this, as I tend to write longer sentences to fully capture feelings without the distraction of an interruption or a period.

As such, I found that the best way to read Proust was to actually not read every word of the sentence, but rather to gloss over each sentence to get a sense of the feeling Proust tries to convey. 

I really liked the humanness of the themes explored (thus far), and I found myself gasping at how he seemed to capture the little nuances of very human experiences in his sentences, ie. the feelings of being alone in a dark room and drifting away into memory. I really liked how abstract memory is portrayed, and I really liked how he described the relationship between him and his mother where we could really understand the importance of her love and the result of its lack (though I’m only on page 32 and haven’t fully seen what happens later in the novel).

Regardless, I absolutely love stories where the writing implores the reader to read between the lines and begs the reader to read beyond the words that are just written. It also makes sense to me that his writing come off as ‘confusing’, as I feel like it is in the nature of such emotions and experiences that they cannot be fully explored in words and require more from the reader to relate to or to understand – maybe even more experiences in their own lives.

I’ll update this blog once I finish – but there are my thoughts so far! What emotion did you find that you could relate to in this story?

About Me + First Lecture Thoughts:

I’m Nandita, and I’m a third year Philosophy major who has accidentally finished her major and is now exclusively taking electives until graduation. I think I saw this course in an email sent out by UBC suggesting courses and RMST 202 caught my attention. I don’t know anything about Romance studies, which prompted me to impulsively register myself in the course, but it’s the description that really pulled me in.

Specifically it was this sentence:

“…all these authors and texts push

 at limits, question the past, and break free to construct something new…”

I took philosophy as a way to push the limits of my understanding and expand my learning, so it was very easy for me to decide after skimming the course description that I would take this course. That’s the only context I’m entering this course with, and I’m excited to meet fresh and invigorating voices and explore the unique obscurities of each perspective and story.

 

First Lecture:

I found this lecture to be very interesting. I really like the fact that romance studies is ‘deterritorialized’.

I have two questions that popped up:

First, what makes something influential? What has made the works we are reading influential to us now? I wonder if it is that we can recognize a perspective that may have been outlandish then which speaks to universal values we can acknowledge now, or if simply the lack of any such static or recognizable values make the works that much more thought-provoking and hence influential.

Secondly, I wonder if it is the spawning of these Romance languages from Latin as mentioned in the lecture, that ties them all together and categorizes ‘Romance Studies”. Maybe the stories and perspectives all inhabit some rebellious or individualistic nature/narrative, that whether intentionally or consequently, aim to speak from a voice of their own creation and capture centrally the specificities of their spawned identities in conversation with their language and the culture that arise together, from Latin or any other attempt of familiarization.

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